Synthesis and Characterization of Molybdenum Incorporated Cubic Mesoporous Materials and the Study of Catalytic Activity of SBA-1 and MCM-48

Abstract

In present work, a two step synthetic procedure for the synthesis of MCM-48 materials is proposed. A sample of Mo-MCM-48 with Si/Mo ratio 100 was synthesized applying the same procedure as applied for the synthesis of Si-MCM-48 materials, only difference was that ammonium hepta-molybdate was added as a source of molybdenum in the second step. Two samples of SBA-1 and Mo-SBA-1 were also synthesized. The XRD patterns of synthesized Si-MCM-48 and Mo-MCM-48 and that of SBA-1 and Mo-SBA-1 were in good agreement with those of reported data for the cubic MCM-48 and SBA-1 materials. The synthesized samples were further characterized by FT-IR (for phase formation), TGA (for thermal stability), N2 adsorption-desorption isotherm (for surface are, pore size and pore volume), UV-DRS (for insertion of Mo in the framework) and SEM (for morphology). The catalytic activity of synthesized MCM-48 was found to be better than SBA-1 for the esterification reaction of benzyl alcohol and acetic acid.